© Naoko Smith 2016
Grateful thanks to Bramblethorn, and to Bramblethorn's wife, for reading and commenting at very short notice on the story and helping out with suitable suggestions for young Victorian ladies' wardrobe items and sports activities.
I had the idea for this story when I read on the Authors' Hangout that doctors used to use vibrators in Victorian Britain to cure hysteria in upper class ladies. It was said that the vibrator had been invented because doctors were getting an early form of repetitive strain injury from wanking off desperate young women.
I thought that was a wonderful idea for an erotic story. Unfortunately, like a lot of myths about Victorian sex and sexuality, it turned out not to be true, LOL, but I figured I would not let the 'truth' get in the way of a good tale. This was far too good a way of writing about repressed female sexuality to let go.
The photos
: I took one photo of a picture I cut out from a magazine article about a carousel. The other I took of a Valentine's card I was given by a friend. He found it in an auction house in London where he was working.
I used to go for long tramps over Hampstead Heath with my friend, followed by afternoon tea. I was very bad in those days at picking it up when someone admired me, rather like the heroine of my story. Only much later did I realise that my friend was one of many admirers.
(RIP, dear Phil, I still often think of you.)
The poems
: are by George Gordon, Lord Byron; Alfred Tennyson (not ennobled at the time of this story); and Robert Herrick.
Picture of carousel sign.
I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it,
I cannot bear it
!
When the feelings rise up in me, I try. I do try. Mama sees the truth. She gives me a look. I tremble so, for fear she will punish me again, and the feelings come rising up -- choking me. I try to look down, modestly, to still my beating heart, to stop the flushed blood rising in my cheeks. I cannot bear it! I get thrown into such a hysteria.
I had the misfortune to be born on St. Valentine's Day -- 1844. A well reared and educated girl, I of course do not look for any foolish lace and paper cards decorated with cupids and the like on The Day. I content myself with a small family party to which Mama may invite one or two of my friends from school.
I just know she will invite Clara Macready again this year. Clara will be simpering with the ring on her finger -- although I own to you, that I have never seen such a small stone in my life. I do not know what she thinks she has to boast of in such a trumpery little ring. She and Mrs Macready will be full of the details of her coming spring wedding.
I cannot bear it! It is my birthday, not Clara Macready's day. She will have her wedding day soon enough. Mama will giving me those sharp looks, to what purpose? How to catch a man as Clara has done -- she is a full year younger than I, yet will be married while I remain imprisoned at home with Mama.
No no! Let me not fall into the hysteria now. I am happy, of course. I am so grateful to Mama for her forbearance. I wish ... but I would not push myself at men as Clara Macready and Cecily Miles do.
I cannot bear it! Oh please no, not the dreadful hysteria. Mama beats me so with the ivory ruler and I cannot help screaming with it.
Perhaps if I had beauty such as Clara's, or a title like the Honourable Lady Cecily Miles. (To you, I need not scruple to say that without her title such a scrawny little thing would find little favour.) Clara is small and has a full hourglass figure with a tiny waist. She has hair like spun gold. She can smile so sweetly at the gentlemen (although I should warn you, she is spiteful in truth). What am I to look at? With my strong shoulders and straight back, my dark hair and grey eyes. Mama is forever telling me not to look so keenly, but it is not I, truly. It is just the look of grey eyes.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
I am obliged to call Clara and Cecily my friends. They are the ones Mama has singled out as suitable for the exchange of visits. I would have preferred someone more after my heart, one of the girls my own age. There was Emily Cardrew who planned to go to college -- yes it is true, there is a women's college to be established at Cambridge University and Emily wished to attend. In classes at school, we would discuss literature and art, however Mama gave me that look when I told her of Emily's plans. I knew with a sinking heart that Emily would not be welcome to afternoon tea and croquet parties in the summer with my brothers and their friends.
Well, Clara has her ring and Emily her studies and I go out and about with Mama. These days she says I should not play shuttlecock even. I should do something less athletic, more decorous: stitching or water colour painting.
Sometimes, I envy even our maids. They have each other and I hear laughter coming up the back stairs from the kitchen. I wonder what fun they might have in each other's company. They told me that Peter the boots boy can do comic accents and sing songs from the music hall stage. I would like to go to the music hall, I think. Yes yes, I know -- such a thing would not be at all proper.
The maid Betty even has a follower. Oh yes, she does, although it is forbidden. I saw her once. I glanced out the window as I went up the stairs. I saw the brazen little hussy on the steps going up from the basement area, tittering and looking in
such
a way, coquetting with a policeman. She had a rough shawl wrapped quickly about her head; she must have snatched it up to run up the area steps and catch him as he came by on his beat -- the little trollop.
It was a misty autumn night about three or four months ago. I saw her face flushed and laughing in the lamplight, raised to look up the steps at her fancy man's tall figure in the blue uniform. He stood above her where she was hooded by her shawl in the mist. He smiled and twirled a truncheon in his fingers as if to show her how thick and long it was.
That designing ... slut. I cannot bear it! She will be married, and I will be left alone at Mama's beck and call. To do as she says, always exactly as she says. Look here, but not there. Look down and not up. Walk in this way, not that. I could never run up some steps to catch a man -- so sly, so improper.
Later that night, Betty pulled too hard on my corset strings as she dressed me for dinner so I could hardly breathe. I slapped her face for her and told her: "I saw you with your fancy man. Do you want me to tell Mama? You will be turned off without a character if I do."
She stood with her hand to the red slap on her cheek and tears in her eyes -- the false jade. My hand burned with the feeling of that slap to her face. She was a sorry fool to cry for a little slap. I did not slap her with that stinging ivory ruler, now, did I? However much good it would have done her wicked soul.
She is more mindful when she dresses me now. She used to sing under her breath while she did my hair: little songs she brought with her from her home:
Blow the wind southerly, southerly southerly
. Now she is quiet and careful. Well, that is more proper behaviour on her part. Although it makes me feel stuffy, and then I feel the hysteria rising again -- no, please!
This life: going after Mama to step into the carriage and be taken to tea with her friends; to hear how their daughters are married or will be married. Mama might take me to the shops but it will always be the shops she chooses. She decides what would be proper for me to have and what would not be decent.
I saw a most beautiful pair of gloves, with roses embroidered on the backs. I did think they were most elegant. But no, of course, Mama was right. The plain lavender gloves do very well and match the ribbons to my new bonnet. Only every time I look at the lavender gloves, I think of those embroidered ones and I feel it all coming up in me, I start to choke, my breath gets short, Mama looks at me -- I cannot bear it.
I live for Saturdays and Sundays, when Papa and the boys are not at our family business. Boys, I call them. They are young men. Charles and Ambrose have joined papa to work in our family's business. When we were children, I was closest to Percy -- who is but a year younger than myself. Now he is preparing to go up to Oxford. Charles is very kind to me these days.
On Saturday afternoons Papa will go to his club as a rule, but my brothers might take me to an art gallery, to see some new work perhaps by Sir Edwin Landseer. I like the paintings which are called pre-Raphaelite; Mama disapproves so the boys and I will not talk too much of them to her. Charles will escort me to the bookshops and lending libraries, which Mama calls dusty and does not care for. On Sundays after dinner, Mama discourages the boys from playing card and board games as we might do on Saturday nights. I play the pianoforte and sing, or one of the boys might sing with me.
Ah, in our childhood, how happy we were. I seem to remember those halcyon days as always summer. Our old nurse would take us to the countryside for weeks at a time. I was permitted to run freely with the boys, fishing in the stream and sliding down haystacks. Yes, I was permitted to run! It is no wonder then that now Mama says disapprovingly I am like an Amazon, and she is obliged to beat me into propriety and recommend that I use Rimmel's Lotion for freckles.
Is it for that that I have no ring on my finger, no beau, no card for Valentine's Day? Not that I would wish for such a vain, silly, frivolous piece of nonsense, I assure you.
Nurse used to call my freckles 'sun kisses'. I would be regularly covered in them as a child but now they do not seem so evident, do they? Still, Mama is forever at me to keep my bonnet on, to lower my head as I walk so I do not catch the sun -- or some worthless man's roving eye.
I assure you, I am most content at home with Mama. I have no wish to throw myself away on any man. Men are so .... I do not know what to think of Charles and Ambrose's friends, if they are permitted to visit. Charles's friend Valentine, for example. (He also works in papa's business so he is invited sometimes to dine.) When Charles brought him to visit, he remarked on how my birthday is Valentine's Day, and Valentine gave me a keen look.
I dislike him extremely, I assure you. He looks at me in such a way, it troubles me. We used to play shuttlecock and then it was not so bad, we would talk while we played. Valentine used to apologise if he hit the feathered shuttle too far for me. I would laugh and say it was not his fault if I could not get to it sufficiently quickly. But Mama said privately to me that I must not jump and run like a hoyden, nor chatter to men too freely.
Now it is winter, Valentine comes of an evening and asks me to play the pianoforte, to accompany his singing. Last Sunday he brought the setting to music of words by the poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson.
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
